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One thing is clear: writing in any form is a battle to be different, not to write about the obvious. Sometimes she is unsure what the second sentence will be but once started she does write quickly. Her approach is to just start writing: she said that she never knows where the story will go. When she uncovers an idea, often that opening line, she does not label it as a novel, short story or play but starts to develop it first. Recently, I sat in on a Q&A where she had the chance to talk about her writing the following day she appeared at another Q&A, and some of her responses were posted on social media, which allowed me to form a more rounded picture. An understandable conclusion but one that Motoya would say is wide of the mark. Some readers might conclude her writing falls into that Japanese genre where dreams, fantasies, and folklore rather than realism all take centre stage. Superficially, it could be said, her stories are often about slightly off-kilter people finding themselves in an off-centred world though this is an illusion dancing on the surface of her stories. Those opening lines offer a clue to Motoya’s writing style. This has opened up a rare avenue for non-Japanese speakers to experience Motoya’s extraordinary writing, first in a book of short stories published in the UK under the title Picnic in the Storm or, in the US, as The Lonesome Bodybuilder. Thus far thirteen have been published but only recently has her worked been translated into English (by Asa Yoneda). Her novels and short stories have been published since 2003. Motoya is a literary superstar in Japan: she has won the Kenzaburo Oe Prize, the Yukio Mishima prize and, in 2015, the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most lauded literary award, (and akin to the Booker in the UK, albeit with a different format). ‘All through the meeting, I was so distracted by the bulge in the curtain, I could hardly sit still.’įrom these three opening lines alone, a reader will instinctively know they are about to be drawn into an extraordinary world, one created by Yukiko Motoya, a Japanese writer, playwright, theatre director, and actor. ‘She’d gone in, so there was no way she wasn’t coming out again.’

‘One day, I realised I started to look just like my husband.’